Gauvain

Gauvain is the nephew of the King Arthur. It belongs to the first knights that the king, helped by Merlin, names with the Roundtable. Several equivalents Celtic of his name are found: Gwalchmai and Gwalchmei (" falcon of mai") like Gawain in English, but its name comes from Welsh Gwalchgwyn: " falcon blanc".

It helps Arthur in many tasks, and shown its honesty towards him by facing the green knight, a strange being which proposes to be made cut the head…
When Lancelot saves the Reine Guenièvre to rough-hew, it kills the younger brother of Gauvain: Gareth. He then swears to be avenged and concealed Lionel, the cousin of Lancelot. When he faces this last in singular combat, he does not kill it, but Gauvain comes out broken cranium from it. He dies of his wound, after having asked Arthur to join with Lancelot if he wanted to overcome Mordred.

In the Search of Graal, he is the most eloquent representative of this warlike layer without God and transcendence, whereas on the other hand Galaad is found, the elected knight, the perfect knight.

The romantic tradition, as of Christian of Troyes, us presents Gauvain like a surface character, a knight valiant, but unable to exceed the system of values of ici-bas.
However, it passes in the world of dead while entering the castle of the queens where it finds her mother deceased and is the first to return from there. Accommodated as hero, it is, when it arrives, the only man of the castle and manages to make leave this place of dead the queens whose grounds were plundered. It also meets the love there.

In the Tale of Graal , often entitled in an erroneous way Perceval , this knight accomplished meets the not-courteous world, its ugliness and its despair and must preserve its integrity, while Perceval, left this world, must in an opposite movement acquire lasts it chivalrous discipline. Relative nearest to the king, guard of royal justice, Gauvain becomes for the romantic tradition the partisan of the primitive faide and a great number of texts place it on the front of the scene right to make of him a charmer, a gallant eternal, medieval alternative of Don Juan. There remains a wise knight and good councils for the king.

Mythological substrate

Gauvain is a solar hero, whose force grows and decrease with the race of the star of the day. It is thus at midday that it is most powerful. It thus presents affinities with the god Oengus of which it shares the name, but the christianization of the novels makes difficult a more thorough analysis of this character.

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